King Edward’s School, Bath

A complex construction on a land-locked site of a state-of-the-art teaching centre for an independent co-educational day school.

Project

Founded in 1552, King Edward’s School is an independent co-educational school teaching 950 pupils from nursery up to sixth form.

Beard was contracted by the school to build modern new facilities for senior school and sixth form students studying science, modern languages, geography and ICT. The scheme involved the construction on a landlocked site of a new two-storey building housing classrooms, laboratories and ICT facilities. The new building combined a unique mix of traditional and modern construction incorporating a steel frame and envelope with Bath stone and optima cladding panels.

Beard was awarded a Building Safety Group Health and Safety Award for its successful and unobtrusive completion of the project.

Challenges

Limited space: the building was located at the centre of the school campus, sandwiched tightly between existing classrooms and the school’s sports hall

Difficult access which had to be shared by school and construction traffic

Working in a ‘live’ college environment on a landlocked site

Managing health and safety in a live school environment

Minimising disruption to daily school life

Managing the use of a tower crane which could potentially over-sail parts of the site boundary fence

Solutions

Our project team worked closely and collaboratively with the school to ensure that every aspect of the construction works was managed safely with minimum impact on school academic and sporting activities. Existing corridors were diverted and temporary scaffolding staircases were erected around the construction site. This meant the school was able to function normally and the team was able to complete the project in time for the new academic term.

Shared access issues were resolved by employing a gateman to control vehicle movements through the site. This also ensured that school bus trips could be safely managed without disrupting pick-up and drop-off services.

Careful health and safety planning was implemented at every stage, particularly with the operation of the tower crane to ensure that loads were never lifted outside of the boundary fence.

“We are delighted to have such a wonderful new resource which will provide a first class facility for several academic departments, which further enhances the quality of King Edward’s learning environment. Despite bad weather delays the project was completed on schedule for our new academic year thanks to Beard’s commitment and ‘can do’ attitude.”